FAMILY MATTERS
BY BARBARA BALLINGER
Master of the 3 P’s
Practice, prioritize, and plan: That’s what it takes to achieve balance in your work and personal life. This month we introduce a column dedicated to those of you who’ve mastered the three P’s.
Maya Pavane,ABR®, GRI, of Keller Williams Realty Boise, in Boise, Idaho, sells homes in the $150,000 range. Her sales volume for 2004 was about $7 million. Pavane’s secret weapon: Her parents moved nearby to help. Her personal goals are to complete a triathlon, establish a child-care foundation for single parents, and go to college when her sons, Austin (center) and Tyler, go.
Salesperson Maya Pavane knew she’d achieved work-life balance when she stopped working Sundays. Today she rarely works Saturdays and turns away prospects she and her two assistants are too busy to service properly. But she’s hardly complacent. “When you’re hungry, you figure out how to succeed,” says Pavane, 32, mother of two sons, 11 and 12.
Eleven years ago, Pavane worked as a receptionist at a real estate company in Clarksville, Tenn. Newly divorced, she wasn’t making enough money to support her sons and didn’t have the flexibility to give them sufficient time. “I needed to become my own boss,” she says.
She earned her license and engaged in novel strategies to sell homes. First one: She bought one soft drink at more than 25 stores daily and handed each cashier a business card. Pavane sold 14 houses her first month. But the limited market in Clarksville spurred her to relocate in 2000 to more robust Boise, Idaho.
Before her sons were in school, Pavane hired an elementary-education student to watch them between 6 a.m. and 2 p.m. And she put into action her Tennessee mentor’s advice: “Get and stay organized. Finish one project before you rush into another.”
On one Tuesday—typically her busiest day—she exercises at daybreak, gets her sons to their 7 a.m. bus, makes calls, heads to her office for a 9 a.m. meeting, delivers seasonal goodies to three large businesses, and returns home to answer e-mail, tweak her Web site, and greet her sons when they return. She makes dinner and drives the boys to hockey practice without the cell phone or radio interfering. “It’s Mom-and-son time,” she says.
To keep attracting prospects, she and her team members send monthly postcards to 10,000 area prospects. Since Boise has become a relocation destination, the team also mails monthly fliers to 6,000 practitioners in Southern California. She closed 84 transactions last year and is shooting to nearly double that this year.
Pavane also gives back. She chairs her local REALTORS® Political Action Committee and volunteers locally with her Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation for the Blind. She’s also on the state association’s Legislative Committee and the Ada County (Idaho) Association of REALTORS® board of directors.
“What I do has never been about making lots of money but having freedom to raise my sons and give back. Your kids are only young for so long,” she says. “There will be more transactions.”
NAR is promoting work-life balance through a new “FamilyTime ” program it produced with the Million Dollar Roundtable, an insurance industry group. Pricing for the DVD begins at $5. For more information, call 800/874-6500 or read the online product description at the REALTOR.org store.
